The vegetarian challenge has been going well. I haven’t been keeping up with my daily photos/recipes (there’s quite the backlog). But, I have been eating fabulously. I’ve only slipped up twice and they weren’t on purpose. One was because I was an idiot (who knew Chicken in a Biscuit crackers actually had chicken in them?) and one was at a party – I had some dip and realized after the first bite that there was bacon in it. Of course, my sister taunted me last week with a huge juicy medium-rare steak. And I almost took the steak knife and stabbed her with it. But I refrained. Because I love her. And I don’t want to go to jail over a steak.

I saw Hood to Coast with my running friends last week and it made me realize that yes, I DO want to do the Madison to Chicago relay. Clearly, I’m insane. But so are they. And I <3 them.

As you may know, I’ve been on and off the Weight Watchers program for years. I first joined in 2005 and was most recently a member in 2008 or 2009. I have been hesitant to re-join as I found the old Points program didn’t value fruits and “REAL” food the way I do. I felt it rewarded processed and highly-preserved food. But, ever since Weight Watchers announced the new Points Plus program, I have been intrigued. It holds fruits in a much higher regard and takes into account NOT calories, BUT fat, protein, carbohydrate and fiber content. That’s right… NO CALORIES INVOLVED. I’ve followed some blogs like Bitch Cakes and others who have really taken to the new program and figured, what the hell, I’ll try it again. Oh, and let’s not forget about my neighbor, Esther, who’s in a national commercial for WW!

I’m not going to weekly meetings, but instead relying on the online program and a support system made up of some lovely Tweeps like Sue! We’ve created a private FB support group. If you’d like to join our group, send me an e-mail! It’s been nice for my first few days especially to have a support system I can go to without 1) annoying my twitter followers 2) annoying my fb friends 3) annoying everyone around me. 😉

In an effort to keep me more honest about what I’m shoving into my face, I decided that for all of January, I would become a vegetarian. I’ve flirted with the idea before, but could never get over the fact that to be a vegetarian, you can’t eat meat. Like, EVER. And, well, I love me some meat. I just don’t eat it very often. And, when I do eat meat, I make every attempt to ensure it comes from a good home (i.e. cage free/hormone free/antibiotic free/free roaming/grass-fed/etc). I don’t buy chicken or beef from the big companies you would typically associate with those foods, mostly because of how the animals are treated. Generally, when I buy beef, pork or chicken, I purchase it at a farmer’s market, Whole Foods or Outpost – places where I know where the meat came from. I wasn’t always like this, but then I started doing some research and of course, watching films like Food, Inc. solidified this choice for me.

So, here I am. Day #1 of vegetarianism. So far, so good. I almost screwed up, however, at 12:30 this morning while at a New Year’s party. There were bacon-wrapped water chestnuts as an hors d’ouvre and I had been eating them earlier in the night. Luckily, even a slightly intoxicated Amy was able to catch herself before eating it! I’ve been ok so far, but I’m sure that’s because I’m at home and I bought a bunch of vegetarian-friendly foods to aid in the transition to meat-free living.

Happy New Year!

For brunch, I had some leftovers from last night – crackers, beer bread and pizza dip.

For dinner, I had the veggie pizza you see below. MMMMMM (do you see a pattern here? Obviously, pizza is my weakness).

Cheese (I used fresh mozzarella and a little bit of a cheddar jack blend)

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Place crust on pizza stone, cookie sheet or pizza pan. Put a couple of spoonfuls of tomato paste on the crust and spread around. Top with veggies. I used spinach, carrots, broccoli and tomatoes. Then I sliced up the fresh mozzarella (about 3 small balls) and placed on the pizza. I topped with a sprinkle of the shredded cheese blend and baked in the oven for 10-15min (until cheese begins to brown).

I’ve done so many variations on this in the past. One of my favorite veggie mixes to use is broccoli slaw. MMMMM.

I won’t be posting blogs every day with updates, but my plan is to tweet using the hashtag #31daysofveg and to post pictures daily to Flickr. I’ll do a wrap-up post each week here, but if you’re interested in my daily adventures with vegetarianism, you’ll wanna follow my Twitter feed and check up on Flickr.